Knights of the Black and White Book One. Jack Whyte

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ “It is a thing that has been building up for years now. I have discussed it with my lord the Count of Champagne, and with Count Fulk of Anjou, and several of the others, and there seems to be nothing we can do about it, other than resist in silence and refuse to suffer their damned arrogance.”

      The Baron glanced again from man to man, bringing all of them into what he was saying. “There is nothing of God in this, and I know you all know that. The breed of priests with whom we have to deal here care nothing for the things of God, save when it pleases them to wield His name as a weapon on their own behalf. They are all of this world, and hungry for the power and pleasures it contains. They buy their offices and live in fornication and they must stink in the nostrils of God.

      “Gregory tried to stop all that, to reverse the trends, and he did well, for a while. But he was but one man, his reign too brief, and now they are back in power. This new Pope, Urban, is an unknown quantity. He may or may not align himself with the zealots. If he does, however, and if they win—if we permit them to win—then the whole world will be governed by priests and clerics, and men like us might as well lie down and die.”

      “But they won’t win. They can’t.” St. Clair’s voice was heavy with anger. “They are but priests, when all is said. That is iniquitous.”

      “Not so, Stephen. They believe otherwise. It is inevitable, in their eyes. It is the will of God, they say, and who is to contradict them, since only priests may speak with God to discover His wishes? But it is iniquitous. I will not disagree with you on that. And it is iniquity bred of greed and hypocrisy and the stench of corruption. But even if it comes to pass, it will require a long time to accomplish such an end.

      “Urban was elected only recently, in March this year. He is very young and apparently full of ideals, according to the reports I have heard. He has sworn to put an end to all the nonsense—the publicly seen nonsense at the very least—and to resolve the matter of the knights and their uncontrolled violence. How he might do that without abolishing either the knighthood or the priesthood is a mystery to me, and to everyone else who even starts to think about it, but he has undertaken to do it.”

      Hugh had been listening avidly, thrilled to be a participant in a discussion of such depth, and now, emboldened by the fact that everyone plainly recognized his right to be there, he spoke up, surprising himself with the firmness of his own tone. “Well, he is the Pope. He could always start a war somewhere, in his own holy name. That would be nothing new, and it would give the knights something new to think about. They would all flock to a new war, and kill themselves off in admirable numbers. Of course, that would do nothing about the problem of the priests.” Hugh was being facetious, but the Baron took him seriously.

      “And where would he start this new war, boy? That’s not a foolish idea, but it’s impossible. There’s no place to do it. This problem has infected all of Christendom. Everywhere. There’s nowhere you can go to get away from it. There are only two kinds of men in our world—fighters and clerics, knights and priests. You do see that, do you not?”

      Hugh nodded. “Aye, Father, I see it. Our world is, as you say, half-filled with knights, and in the eyes of those who fill the other half—the priests—they are become a plague.” He looked to Sir Stephen St. Clair, who had been listening quietly, but had just reared upright in his chair, and now sat rigid, his eyes gazing off into some far distant place. After a few moments, he sat back again, beginning to scratch at his chin reflectively with one finger.

      “You know, lad, you have just led me to a startling thought,” he said. “You and your father, both. Christendom, the world, is full of knights, you said, and in the eyes of the Church they are become a plague. But not all the world is Christendom, and Christendom is sadly less than all the world … and the Bible itself teems with plagues …” His voice trailed away and he fell silent for a while. “I must think more on this, consult with people, and then, perhaps, I may talk to this new Pope. Perhaps. But not today. I have no wish to mix with clerics, and no need to go to Rome or Avignon, so let us talk now of other things. Have you heard about this new siege engine the Normans have developed, this trebuchet? I think that’s what they are calling it. No, none of you? That surprises me. I have yet to see one of them myself, but by all accounts it is a fearsome device, capable of throwing a stone the size of a heavy man farther than anything else ever has.”

       FOUR

      In the years that followed his Raising, from the age of eighteen until he was twenty-five, Hugh de Payens learned a great deal about life, while making rapid progress through the Levels of Learning of the Order of Rebirth, but he appeared to take little overt interest in any of the great changes that were occurring in the world around him. He was the kind of young man that people think of as being driven, impelled by a force that sets him apart and spurs him constantly to succeed in everything he attempts. Thus, when it came to his knightly responsibilities he fought like a lion, mastering sword, axe, dagger, mace, and spear, and even the crossbow, and was unbeatable either in the lists or in the butts, where his accuracy with the steel crossbow bolts quickly became a matter for awe. At the same time, he maintained a constant and focused attention to his studies within the Order of Rebirth, spending far more time with his tutors and elders than he did with people of his own age.

      Commitment on such a scale carries a certain penalty, in that it leaves little time for things that are considered unimportant. Had anyone thought to ask for Hugh’s opinion, they might have been perplexed to discover that, at such an early age, he considered relaxation or leisurely behavior of any kind unimportant and frivolous. He had no interest in carousing with his fellow knights, and he made no secret of the fact that he found the drinking of ale, for the mere sake of drinking until one grew drunk, to be a useless, feckless pursuit. That earned him little liking among his peers. But Hugh had friends enough, he believed; Godfrey St. Omer and Payn Montdidier had been his friends since boyhood, and even then he would have trusted them with his life. In later life he was to do exactly that, time and time again.

      Godfrey’s family, the St. Omer clan, held great estates in Picardy, and Godfrey had spent almost half his boyhood there, usually the winter months each year, obediently but under protest, since he was by far a younger son, fifth in line to inherit. He much preferred the other half of his life, where he spent the long summers in his mother’s domain, which was close to Payens and the residence of her favorite cousin, Hugh’s mother, and the friendship between their mothers had made it almost inevitable that the two boys should be friends, too.

      Godfrey, much like Hugh in many things, was the perfect foil to him in others. The two were of an age, a mere ten months separating their births, with Godfrey the elder, and there was not a single item of physical similarity between them to indicate that they might be related to each other. Godfrey, with bright golden hair, had always appeared, at least from a distance, to be the more comely of the two youths, but on closer view, his blue eyes were set perceptibly closer together than were Hugh’s brown ones, and although both lads had open, friendly countenances, the few girls of their acquaintance seemed to prefer Hugh’s dark, saturnine appearance to Godfrey’s sunny, golden one. The sole exception to that rule, as might be expected, was Hugh’s younger sister, Louise, who had never had eyes for anyone other than Godfrey St. Omer since she grew old enough to recognize him from a distance. Godfrey, for his part, saw nothing out of place in that and was happy to return her high regard in equal measure.

      Perhaps because of their close association with each other since childhood—Godfrey felt closer to Hugh than he ever had to any of his own brothers—they were equally skilled with weapons, although when he had to, Hugh could usually outfight Godfrey with swords. With the crossbow, however, a controversial weapon at the best of times since its distant and impersonal lethality seemed inconsistent with the spirit of chivalry, Godfrey always performed dismally and therefore tended to dismiss it contemptuously as being a weapon for СКАЧАТЬ